The energy industry has recently begun using smart meters to take fine-grained readings of energy usage. These smart meters enable flexible time-of-use billing, forecasting, and demand response, but they also raise serious user privacy concerns. We propose a novel technique for provably hiding sensitive power consumption information in the overall power consumption stream. Our technique relies on a rechargeable battery that is connected to the household\'s power supply. This battery is used to modify the household\'s power consumption by adding or subtracting noise (i.e., increasing or decreasing power consumption), in order to establish strong privacy guarantees in the sense of differential privacy. To achieve these privacy guarantees in realistic settings, we first investigate the influence of, and the interplay between, capacity and throughput bounds that batteries face in reality. We then propose an integrated method based on noise cascading that allows for recharging the battery on-the-fly so that differential privacy is retained, while adhering to capacity and throughput constraints, and while keeping the additional consumption of energy induced by our technique to a minimum.

The IACR website has a new look. A team of cryptologists has recently started an effort to advance the online services of the IACR, and has formed a new online content team for this task. What you see today is the result of the first two months of steady improvements. We hope that you like it and that you find the new organization useful.

This is only a start, and we know that many things are not yet as integrated as we would wish. We are working on improving the site and you should visit http://www.iacr.org often to see further improvements.

We are seeking a candidate for the position of Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Computer Science (including cryptography).

A successful candidate will have extensive university-level teaching experience and didactic skills, experience in academic supervision of graduate students, as well as experience in research and a strong international publication track record.

The candidate will be able to teach courses in the area of theoretical computer science on Master level and advanced Bachelor level, in particular a course on discrete mathematics.

We are interested both in candidates who can contribute to existing research groups (cryptography, semantics) as well as in candidates who bring in new areas of research expertise.

Furthermore, the senior lecturer is expected to supervise Master and Ph.D. students.

For applying, please follow the instructions here: http://www.ut.ee/en/application-documents-and-notification-results and send you application to personal (at) ut.ee.

The Engineering Cryptographic Protocols (ENCRYPTO) group in the European Center for Security and Privacy by Design (EC SPRIDE) at TU Darmstadt is offering a PhD position. Relevant research topics include computer-aided cryptography engineering, privacy-preserving protocols, and hardware-assisted cryptographic protocols. Review of applications starts on April 16, 2012 and will continue until the position has been filled.

I will have a postdoc position available in my group next year. This will be a 1-year position, with the possibility of extending it to a second year subject to the availability of funds. Shorter-term visits can also be considered.

I encourage applicants who work on more applied aspects of cybersecurity in addition to those who work on cryptography. Students working in areas relevant to cybersecurity will also be considered.

If you are interested, please send me an email with a copy of your CV, a short research statement, and the name of at least one reference.